The version on screen thrust and penetrated. Brendan’s stomach wrenched with jagged anguish. His head and heart pounded in tympanic unison.
“‘I was born to you, and your infinite forms.’ I was reborn to you, detective, in you, and everyone like you.”
Brendan looked at the helpless child on the bed next to them. The person holding the camera was unsteady, as if shaking a little. He was reminded of the girl on the couch in the fake interview on XList, but other than that, the comparison faltered. This was not pornography. This was sadism, rape, humiliation, the corruption of a child. And, Brendan was sure, a prelude to Rebecca’s murder.
“And so now I have come for you.” The breathy words hissed right next to Brendan’s head as the demon on screen huffed and gyrated. It was as if the voice was in stereo inside of his head.
“I’ve come to steal your children.”
“Stop,” Brendan said weakly. The authority in his voice had crumbled. The word was an impotent plea.
The video-version of Forrester pulled away a moment later. It was tough to be exactly sure, but he appeared to ejaculate on the bed off to the side. The bed, Brendan recalled, that was sometime later covered with plastic, as if brand new, fooling investigators into not checking the mattress below for forensic evidence.
Forrester retreated from the lifeless, prone Rebecca quickly. The baby was once again crying next to her. Forrester snapped and zipped himself back up and then turned to the camera. “Shut it off,” he barked.
A second later, and the screen went dark.
“Now let’s take a walk.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO / MONDAY, 9:36 PM
Brendan was marched out into the hallway beyond the lecture hall. Brown had the barrel of his .45 pressed between Brendan’s shoulder blades. They headed to the end of the hallway where the stairwell was. They passed by two window casings which contained no glass, and were only covered with clear tarpaulins which flapped gently in the breeze. Brendan felt the air. Outside, the night was damp.
The campus out there was quiet. For one, it was Columbus weekend. For another, this entire side seemed to be shut down for the construction of the new Business building. The nearest building was over a hundred yards away, dark and still.
They passed out of the hallway, entered the stairwell, and began their way down. Forrester carried the child in the bassinet. From a faraway part of his mind, Brendan remembered that people called them Moses baskets. It had been so long since his little girl had lain in one herself.
So long since she had been inside that tiny casket, in the end.
Brendan’s pains seemed to vanish at the thought of his own little girl. Another little girl’s life was at stake here. His mind grew still. Their footfalls echoed in the stairwell as they descended, turning with each flight. Forrester’s head bobbed below. He had taken a flashlight from his office and was lighting the way for them.
At first Brendan had wondered why the killer would show him such damning evidence. The video didn’t depict a murder, but it was enough for any D.A. to build a solid case around. There was Forrester’s ownership of the house in Boonville to consider as well. And chances were that his shoe size would match the boot print on Rebecca’s door. There were a half a dozen other puzzle pieces which would form a picture of this man’s guilt, but the video of Rebecca’s rape – right in front of the child – that was enough to send Forrester away for life. Maybe even to kill him.
As they came to the bottom floor, Brendan figured that he would never leave this building again. It was the only way he could explain being shown the video. Forrester and Brown meant to kill him down here.
* * *
The basement floor was where the gymnasium was located. Brendan remembered the map from the lobby, and thinking that the building contained enough amenities for a person to hardly ever need to leave. They passed two sets of double doors looking in on a brand new gymnasium lit by emergency lights, reflecting in the shiny floor. So there were lights down here, Brendan thought. Forrester had the place wired, for sure – this was where he wanted to be able to see. Why?
Brendan’s stomach flipped as he thought of the answer. A moment later and they reached the racquet ball courts. Forrester paused in front of one of the solid white doors. He set the bassinet down and then pulled keys from his pocket.
Brendan felt numb. His blood moved sluggishly through his body. His guts slowly churned with bile.
Forrester glanced over his shoulder at Brendan.
You’re going to wish you never came here, he’d said.
The killer pushed the door open. Brendan looked over Forrester’s shoulder at what was in the room. The court had shiny floors like the gym. The walls were smooth and white. The emergency bulbs in the corner cast a sterile glow.
Brendan suddenly imagined a dozen children huddled together in the center of the room, shivering in the cold light.
Then he blinked, and the children disappeared. A sober question passed through him simultaneously – where do you hide illegitimate children? Where do you put babies born of illicit relations between prostitutes and government officials, or God knew who else?
Sitting there in the room was the answer. Alexander Heilshorn sat in a solitary chair, his hands tied behind his back, his mouth gagged.
“You two have met,” said Forrester in an unemotional tone.
A second later, Brown urged Brendan into the room by pressing the barrel hard into his back. Brendan winced and stumbled forward.
“Get over there,” said Brown.
Brendan walked over to Alexander Heilshorn, who looked up at the detective with sad eyes. And Brendan saw in those eyes the answers to so many questions.
Years before, when his daughter had first come to the old doctor with an illegitimate child in her belly, Heilshorn had performed the delivery. But it wouldn’t be the last child he brought into the world under those circumstances, Brendan concluded. Rebecca must have confessed everything to her father. And she had Stemp’s phone call to the wealthy doctor to corroborate everything she’d said – Stemp had very likely been a bodyguard to some high-ranking official, some politico with a taste for brunettes on Thursday nights. He’d probably met Rebecca while driving her to the brownstone building which housed a greedy congressman or businessman. Heilshorn, a man who had already disclosed to Brendan his disapproval of abortion, had then taken it upon himself to assist these other, distressed young women. Chances were he even used his money and influence to secretly shepherd the women to safety. Maybe even help get their babies adopted. And perhaps somewhere, Alexander Heilshorn was even stowing escaped escorts and their incriminating children.
It was circumstantial, mere conjecture, really, but it felt right. Looking into Heilshorn’s haunted eyes, it felt terribly right. Heilshorn had played a highly dangerous game with these people.
But now Titan sought to close this loophole. Rebecca’s murder had set into motion a chain of events which had led here. Brendan was the investigator who was in-the-know. And Heilshorn knew everything, too. Perhaps Titan had let things go for a time – or maybe for a time they hadn’t known the identity of Alexander Heilshorn. Now, though, they had him – his own private investigator had betrayed him and handed him over to Forrester, the raving enforcer in the lurid affair. The ex-professor turned pimp, drawn into darkness after the worst attack on America had left him pinned beneath its immense weight, forging him into this inhuman creature. One who raped a woman in front of her own child. Who kept the fathers of his murder victims locked in the bowels of a dark building.
Brendan stood next to the old man in the chair and looked back at Forrester. The killer stood just inside the doorway, Brown on his one side, the baby in the bassinet set down on his other side.
Then Forrester closed the door behind them.
He looked both men over, and then with macabre show, he recited the last lines of his dark, obscure poem.
“‘There I once was cradled in that autumn wind, a human as unsympatheti
c as the winter which follows, with its starving creatures, coming in low through the howling cold.’”
Brown cocked the .45 and aimed it at Brendan’s head. Brendan closed his eyes. In the distance, he heard the sound of thunder. The humidity had portended a storm, and now the skies were about to open up.
* * *
But the rolling thunder continued. It did not let up.
Brendan heard a door slam out in the hallway beyond the racquetball room. They all did. Forrester jerked and looked around. The noise was followed by swiftly approaching footfalls.
Both Forrester and Brown reacted in a similar fashion. Each man tensed and turned towards the door, backing away. Heilshorn’s haunted expression tightened into a mask of fear.
Then all of them looked at Brendan.
Forrester suddenly lunged across the room, his arms out, his hands hooked into claws. His face was contorted with hate and anger. He tackled Brendan and the two men fell to the floor with a tremendous thump.
Forrester wrapped his hands around Brendan’s throat and started to squeeze. Brendan’s windpipe was choked by the killer’s iron grip. The world began to show spots. Brendan gagged and his tongue flopped.
The footsteps thudding down the hallway subsided and were replaced by murmuring voices. Men were gathering just on the other side of the office door. Brendan flailed and struck Forrester about the body and head. He was getting in some good shots, but Forrester was like some kind of beast who could feel no pain. The killer’s face snarled with rage. Spit flew from his lips as he hissed. He squeezed, and squeezed. Brendan began to black out.
“New York State Police. We know you’re in there. Open up or we will break down this door.”
Brendan struggled and twisted futilely beneath the killer’s weight. He lost sight of anything for a moment, his vision filled with black ink, and then the nightmare reeled back into view.
Suddenly Heilshorn was leaning over Forrester and Brendan. His hands were still tied behind his back, but he had gotten free of the chair. The old man grunted and kicked out with his foot, catching Forrester in the ribs. The killer may have been invulnerable to Brendan’s blows, but the kick caught him right, and he rolled off to the side, wheezing and grabbing at his chest.
Brendan took an explosive breath. He tried to cry out, but his voice was sandpaper, and all that he could issue was a worthless rasp. He took a whooping breath, looking over at Brown. He saw that Brown’s weapon was trained on the door. The baby was only a few feet away, crying now from the bassinet. If there was a shootout, it would be gruesome.
Finally, Brendan found his voice. His throat was ragged, but Brendan summoned everything he had and shouted at last.
“This is Investigator Healy from Oneida County.” This caused him to cough and gag. He rolled over and spat. Blood splattered onto hard, shining floor.
The men paused outside as Brendan drew another painful breath. His entire torso felt as though it were wrapped in barbed wire. He strained his hoarse voice to be as loud as he could manage. “There is a baby in here with us. Stand down. Repeat, stand down.”
There was silence from the other side of the door, and perhaps some shuffling of feet, followed by murmuring voices. Then, “Okay, Healy. Can you get them to come out?”
There was no time. Forrester was already recovering, and getting to his feet.
Get up, NOW.
Brendan pushed off with his palms and managed to stand up. His legs were rubbery and weak – his hip injury pulsating, his neck lashed with a pain that seemed to burrow into his skin. Forrester turned, and the two men locked eyes.
Everything hung suspended for a moment in time. Heilshorn stood, his face wearing the same fearful, resigned look as his daughter Rebecca had shown in the video. Brown took a step towards the door. Forrester reached into the black bag which Brown had brought down and took out Brendan’s own service weapon.
At last it was clear. Forrester had planned this. He had allowed Heilshorn to provide the information which had led Brendan here. He meant for the two men to meet like this, and to stage a murder that would place Heilshorn as the man responsible for his daughter’s own death. It would look like Brendan had tracked the old man here, they had fought, and Brendan had killed Heilshorn before succumbing to his own massive trauma.
But now Forrester reached down and picked up the wailing child. The twisted plan had come unraveled, and he was improvising with devilish intent. He held her tiny body against his chest with one arm, and aimed the .38 at the door with the other. Now both men were standing, one with an innocent child in his arms, ready to open fire on the first cop who came through that door.
“Come and get me,” Forrester said.
To him, Brendan thought as he took a struggling, tearing breath, the world was full of Neros. They idled away the time, oblivious as Rome burned around them. No life was sacred; nothing mattered in this world of utter nihilism. Not even an infant child.
Detective Healy’s world dipped and yawed. He was falling into unconsciousness. He was about to topple over.
He reached out. It was a blind gesture. He just reached out, lurching toward Forrester and the baby.
Brown fired. The sound was deafening in the room. It sounded like war, echoing and rebounding in the court with shattering force. There came one ear-splitting report after another as Brown unleashed on the door, the powerful slugs from the .45 tearing through and leaving huge holes.
Brown emptied the clip. The world was muted and rank with the smell of cordite. The baby’s cries were like a mosquito in the distance. They transported Brendan back to Eddie Stemp’s yard, where he had sat talking with the man and slapping at bugs. Time became jumbled. Where was he? Then things came to a halt for a moment, and the world was suspended.
A second later and the door flew open, breaking the spell of timelessness and throwing everything into high speed chaos. From behind Brown, Forrester started firing into the hallway.
There were shouts then, and a male screaming. Brendan watched as one side of Brown’s face was sheared away as a round of return fire tore into his flesh. Brendan felt the splattering of Brown’s hot blood across his own face and neck. A second later, Brown started to collapse, and Forrester jumped away.
Brendan continued to move, on automatic. He crossed the room with three paces so that he was now behind where Brown had been standing, directly in the line of fire.
He was between the cops in the hallway and the baby in Forrester’s arms.
His hands were up, but it didn’t matter. Having been fired upon, the half dozen or so Troopers standing in the hallway were like an angry swarm of wasps. They stung back, firing into the room as soon as Brendan appeared in the doorway. He realized that none of them had any clue what he looked like anyway.
He was hit in the chest and in the shoulder. He felt one of his fingers taken by a bullet – the appendage literally exploded beside his head.
In that moment, a strange thing happened. As he registered the injuries to his body, and as the State Troopers coming into the room glowered behind their smoking service weapons, he found himself thinking of a professor of his own, from years ago as an undergraduate student. He couldn’t recall which course it had been, but the teacher had once said that the answer to ninety-nine out of a hundred questions could be found by “following the dollar.” Everything came down to money, the professor had warned. The market system drove all inequality, which led to nearly every crime there was a name for. Money, it seemed, was the mother of all habits. No matter the pain it caused – war, poverty, greed – it remained fixed in civilization; the great and unconquerable addiction.
His legs were giving out beneath him. He saw his wife and daughter getting into the car, and he saw himself retreating into the restaurant bar, disappearing into the gloom.
The troopers were shouting about the baby. But while that was happening, Reginald Forrester was trying to get away. He was still firing into the oncoming policemen. Brendan had time to see one of them
take a bullet in the stomach before Forrester was taken down by two other troopers, who tackled the killer to the ground. Another scooped up the baby a second later. She appeared unharmed.
Brendan swayed on his feet. His arms were stretched out either side of him, still forming a sort of human barricade, or shield. His left hand was a bloody mess, dripping quarter-sized drops on the smooth court floor.
His knees finally buckled. The wounds in his chest and shoulder were coming to life. That was how it felt. For a few seconds there had been nothing, and now they seemed to grow, like mouths. Howling, burning mouths in his body, releasing their liquid. His vision swam once more as he dropped.
He felt an arm around him and for a moment thought a State Trooper had him. But then he realized that no one did. One Trooper was slumped in the doorway. Another had gone around the detective and was pulling Alexander Heilshorn away from the scene. Two others were subduing Forrester, yanking his gun from his waistband, prying the other from his grip, and handcuffing him. A fifth Trooper was tending to the child.
The baby was squalling. Its cries filled the room.
Brendan turned to look up in time to see Heilshorn being led away. The old man looked back at Brendan, and Brendan thought he saw pain in his eyes. And fear.
Then a silken blanket of unconsciousness slipped over the detective, and all was dark.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE / MONDAY, Time Unknown
He was in an ambulance. A moment later, he was in a hospital. He was being rushed down a hallway. He lost consciousness again.
* * *
Rudy Colinas was there. Colinas was explaining that he had given the troopers and Albany City Police a description of the red pick-up truck used in the attempt to murder Brendan, and Healy’s last known location. Since he had turned his phone on, they were also able to locate the detective, but the truck had been spotted before they’d even needed to use GPS to triangulate his position. It was registered to Jerry Brown.
HABIT: a gripping detective thriller full of suspense Page 32
